Barclays Bank Kenya (BBK) closed the year ending December 31, 2018 on a high and registered a seven percent growth in profits.

The bank closed the year with a profit after tax (PAT) topping Ksh.7.4 billion, an increase from the Ksh.6.9 billion in earnings recorded over a similar period in 2017.

“Banks are going to continue to look towards automation to become more efficient taking out costs which they can then invest in new products & services and efficient pricing for customers. This is what we are looking at,” BBK Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Awori said.

BBK Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Awori

The up-turn in fortunes is largely attributed to the lender’s ongoing business diversification initiative which helped push up the group’s share of non-interest funded income by 15 percent to Ksh.9.7 billion in the calendar year.

The lender, who in the year to December 2018, began new investments in diversified portfolios such as bancassurance and trade finance saw its deposits grow by 12 percent to Ksh.207 billion with the bank’s loan book extending to Ksh.177 billion from Ksh.168 billion.

President Uhuru Kenyatta with NASA leader Raila Odinga at the Barclays Kenya Open. The two agreed to use sports to unite the country

Timiza, the lender’s recently launched virtual banking tool continued to reap dividends for the bank disbursing Ksh.10 billion in loans within the first nine months of operation.

Barclay’s total operating costs narrowed by 2 percent to Ksh.17.2 billion as the bank’s focus on the automation of processes and services through digitization held costs down to improve the lender’s cost to income ratio (CIR) to 51.4 percent from 55.5 percent in 2017.

The notable performance was however on the back of increased impairment costs which rose 24 percent to Ksh.3.9 billion on an account of additional loss provisioning under the recently implemented IFRS 9 accounting standards in January 2018.